ON THE RIGHT, APPARENTLY THERE ARE LIMITS

Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar recently addressed a conference organized by the white nationalist America First Political Action Committee. Some Republicans are distancing themselves from Gosar and Greene -- in Georgia, Senate candidate Herschel Walker has backed out of an event organized by Greene -- but the response by House Republican leadership is so toothless even CNN's Chris Cillizza is criticizing it.

On Monday night, McCarthy told CNN's Melanie Zanona that it was "appalling and wrong" for Greene and Gosar to speak at an event founded by the far-right activist Nick Fuentes. McCarthy added: "There's no place in our party for any of this. This is unacceptable."

On Tuesday, McCarthy was noncommittal when questioned about Greene. "I understand your job," he told reporters. "I understand what you're trying to do. I've already commented on that."

To which I would say: Yeah, but what are you going to DO about it?

But in Arizona, one legislator has gone so far that even the Republican-controlled state senate has had enough.

Republican and Democratic state senators joined together Tuesday in a historic vote to censure Sen. Wendy Rogers for violent and discriminatory comments she made at a white nationalist conference and on social media attacking the president of Ukraine.

Thirteen Democrats and 11 Republicans voted for the censure language read on the Senate floor

So what did Rogers say in the speech?

“I’ve said we need to build more gallows. If we try some of these high-level criminals, convict them and use a newly built set of gallows, it’ll make an example of these traitors who have betrayed our country,” Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, said Feb. 25 in her speech to the white nationalist America First Political Action Conference in Florida.

You can watch the speech here. The "high-level criminals" are backers of vaccine mandates and tech and financial companies that "deplatform and debank" people like AFPAC's racist leader, Nick Fuentes. (Oh, and for good measure, in the speech Rogers referred to two deeply conservative members of Congress, Representative Dan Crenshaw and Senator James Lankford, as "communists." She also praised Robert E. Lee.)

Wait, there's more: After the speech, Rogers denounced Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy as "a globalist puppet for Soros and the Clintons." Just prior to the speech, she posted this attack on CPAC, which AFPAC regards as a weak-tea rival:

On Friday, prior to her speech at the racist AFPAC event, Arizona lawmaker Wendy Rogers posted this photoshopped image on her Gab and Telegram accounts. She's pictured in the center. The dead rhino is branded with the letters CPAC, which includes a Jewish Star of David. pic.twitter.com/opVZayv0F2

— Nick Martin (@nickmartin) March 1, 2022

And as it became clear that her colleagues might censure her, she lashed out at them:

"So today is the day where we find out if the Communists in the GOP throw the sweet grandma under the bus for being white," she wrote early Tuesday on her Telegram channel.

... On Monday, in response to talks about a censure, Rogers wrote on Telegram she would "personally destroy the career of any Republican who partakes in the gaslighting of me simply because of the color of my skin or opinion about a war I don’t want to send our kids to die in." She added in a separate message she would “not apologize for being white. Hit me all you want.”

I guess even the GOP can't let everything slide.

Although:

[Senator Rick] Gray, R-Sun City, said that although he believed in the censure and is "opposed to the kind of rhetoric that we heard" from Rogers, he's able to separate "personality from policy" and he'll work with anybody who comes up with good bills.

So I guess she'll just go right back to being a senator in good standing.

Meanwhile, here's what another Arizona Republican tweeted today:

THE CORRUPTION IS DEEP AND WIDE. Decertify Now. https://t.co/ikckXyY88w

— Kari Lake for AZ Governor (@KariLake) March 1, 2022

That's the Trump-endorsed, front-running candidate for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, who has also consorted with QAnoners and a neo-Nazi, and who'll be making a campaign appearance with Paul Gosar this weekend. Apparently, Arizona Republicans still consider her within the pale. So you can push the GOP too far -- but it really takes a lot. In Arizona, if you don't refer other Republicans as communists, I guess you can pretty much do whatever you want.